Saturday, December 13, 2008

Yikes! What happened to all of my e-mail?

** Adoption countdown: 5 days until Pam, Terry and Matthew return home **

By TERRY R. CASSREINO

GUANGZHOU, China (Saturday, Dec. 13, 2008, 9:10 p.m.) – I left the White Swan Hotel with Matthew for part of Saturday afternoon while Pam felt ill, returned a couple of hours later, walked into our room, logged on to my computer and found all of my e-mail vanished.

Gone. Kaput. Nowhere to be found. Or, at least, I don’t know where to actually look on my computer for the vanished files. I guess I’ll just have to wait until Pam and I get home next week before I can find someone to help me who is more knowledgeable about computers.

Since then, I am running a full system scan with McAfee. I’m not sure if I have a virus or what, but I’m about t find out at the end of the scan.

Meanwhile, I think I’m taking this pretty darn good. Actually, it gives me an excuse to shift my e-mail program from Thunderbird, which I had been using, to Microsoft Outlook, which is part of the Office 2007 suite I recently bought.

Father-son time

Matthew and I spent some father-son time together much of Saturday, walking around Shaiman Island and dining at Lucy’s – a not-good American-style restaurant that features terrible fried chicken and OK french fries.

Matthew refused to sit in a high chair and wouldn’t sit in the stroller. That meant one thing: I had to juggle Matthew in my lap while I tried to eat dinner, feed him and let him drink bottled water directly from the bottle.

Sunday is a free day for us, so Pam, Matthew and I likely will go Christmas shopping in Guangzhou. We also need to buy an inexpensive suitcase, one of those giant Polo bags they sell around here for the equivalent of $15 or less.

There is no Wal-Mart SuperCenter in Guangzhou, so it looks like Pam and I will have to settle for shopping at Lotus SuperCenter or Carrefour – both of which have stores in town.

We also hope to find a local shopping area where we can land some good deals on jewelry and other items that might make good gifts.

Or, if I’m in the mood to have some fun with relatives, I could buy them a gift certificate to a major department store in Guangzhou.

Either way, Pam and I need to get busy. We are a little more than a week away from Christmas and we haven’t done much shopping. At this rate, I might as well wait for the after-Christmas sales to start my shopping.

By the way: The photo I placed with this blog entry has absolutely nothing to do with this post. Zero. Nada. I just thought it was a nice photo I snapped from the lobby of the White Swan where we are staying through Thursday.

Copyright 2008 by Terry R. Cassreino. All rights reserved.

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